The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
In recent years, network search engine technologies have been improved increasingly, and there are three generation search engines by far. The 1st generation search engine performs search by use of the classifying directory made manually; the 2nd generation search engine performs search by machine grabbing, which is a web page search method based on hyperlink analysis; the 3rd generation search engine performs search according to interaction prompts between a computer and a user. The current search engine mainly performs web page search from web pages on the Internet and files associated with the web pages.
At present, there is a p2p-based network search method in the prior art. FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating the p2p-based network search technology in the prior art. In FIG. 1, Client 1 is a search initiator and Clients 2 and 3 are the first level clients responding to the search initiated by Client 1; Clients 4 and 5 are connected to Client 2, and Clients 6 and 7 are connected to Client 3; Clients 4, 5, 6 and 7 are the second level clients responding to the search. FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating the p2p-based network search method in the prior art. As shown in FIG. 2, the method includes processes as follows.
201: A client initiating search sends a search request to clients connected with the client; the search request is forwarded to other clients connected with the client level by level, and the search request is not forwarded any more after reaching a certain level clients.
For example, Client 1 sends a search request to Clients 2 and 3; Client 2 forwards the search request to Clients 4 and 5, and Client 3 forwards the search request to Clients 6 and 7.
202: A client receiving the search request searches for a local resource index, and returns a search result to the client initiating the search request level by level.
For example, Clients 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 respectively search for local resource indices, and respectively return the resource indices which are searched out to Client 1 level by level.
203: The client initiating search collects, sorts and displays the resource indices for the user, and downloads a resource file via a p2p downloading mode.
For example, after receiving the resource indices returned by clients responding to the search request, Client 1 collects, sorts and displays the resource indices, and downloads a resource file selected by the user according to the resource index via the p2p downloading mode; the resource file is downloaded from a client corresponding to the resource file.
In this p2p-based network search method, since the search request sent by the client initiating search needs to be forwarded to various clients level by level, it will take a long time for the search request to reach clients in various levels; similarly, it also takes a long time for the search results of clients in various levels to be reported to the client initiating search level by level. As a result, the response speed of the p2p-based network search technology is very slow, which is unable to meet the instant requirement of network search.